I was flopped on the bed watching TV when my 11-year-old daughter jumped on my back.

"You hold him down," said the lovely yet formidable Marcia. "I'll go get the scissors."

Scissors?

Turns out they had had enough of my ear hair.

Honest, I don't have much. It's not like it's the jungles of Brazil in there. My ear hair is not like Andy Rooney's eyebrows. You couldn't, if you were that type, curl them or anything.

But as I age, it's true that an occasional rogue hair will arise in places no hair has previously arisen, such as directly out of the middle of my forehead or in and on top of my ears.

Why nature does this, I'll never know. There doesn't seem to be any biologic imperative to having hair inside your ears. Whose inner ears get cold?

But since I can't see them, I tend to not care. But the women in my house are hyper-aware of anything and everything to do with appearance, and apparently they had been silently horrified by my ears for weeks.

"How can you walk around like that?" Marcia said.

"Can you hear anything with all that in there?" Annie added.

"Can I smear what?"

"Mooom, he's trying to be funny again."

Anyway, for the next 15 minutes, they picked and poked at me like the chimpanzees on those nature shows that groom one another.

"Look at this one, momma," Annie would say, stretching one out, and they would marvel at it for awhile before snipping it away. (They wanted to yank. I vetoed.)

"That's nothing," Marcia would say, "Check this one out, it's wiry."

"Eyeeeeeeew!" they would say in unison, but it wasn't a horrified eyeeew, it was more the kind of eyeeeew kids use when they're feeling pumpkin guts.

I tried to object. A man can only take so much indignity.

"I'm trying to watch the game here," I said.

But they shushed me and told me to lie still.

After a while, I did just that. I stayed still and stopped objecting and just let them have their fun. I find that's a sensible practice when living with females. Saves trouble. Plus, it felt kind of good, the way a barber shaving your neck can feel good.

But after a while they migrated, which I should have figured. My wife is the sort who, when we finish painting one room, figures why not do another and then another, and pretty soon we've
painted the whole house.

So what began as an ear-pruning exercise ended up focusing on my back, as well.

OK, yes, apparently I have a little back hair. Very little, though, from what I can see. I'm not a caveman or anything. I have little sprigs here and there toward the bottom of my
ribs, that's all. I don't notice them (behind me -- duh) and they
don't bother me.

But apparently they bother the girls more than the ear hair.

So, yes, they began scissoring my back.

And then, not being satisfied with the result, they shaved my back, laughing at me the whole time.

"He's like a Wookie, Annie," Marcia said.

"He's like a dog," said Annie.

Hoo hoo hoo, hee hee hee. I've never see anything amuse them so much, and I was fine with that, but then my daughter said, "Daddy, would you mind if we plucked your eyebrows, too?
You're getting a unabrow."